The
only joint document issued publicly was a statement from Mohammad Javad
Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, and Federica Mogherini, the European
Union foreign-policy chief, that was all of seven paragraphs.

The statement listed about a dozen “parameters” that are to guide the
next three months of talks, including the commitment that Iran’s Natanz
installation will be the only location at which uranium is enriched
during the life of the agreement.

But the United States and Iran have also made public more detailed
accounts of their agreements made in Lausanne, and those accounts
illustrate their expectations for what the final accord should say.

A review shows there is considerable overlap between the two
accounts, but also some noteworthy differences — which have raised the
question of whether the two sides are on the same page, especially on
the question of how quickly sanctions are to be removed.

The U.S. and Iranian statements do not clarify some critical issues,
such as precisely what sort of research Iran will be allowed to
undertake on advanced centrifuges during the first 10 years of the
accord.

“This is just a work in progress, and those differences in fact
sheets indicate the challenges ahead,” said Olli Heinonen, former deputy
director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Obama administration officials insist there is no dispute on what was
agreed behind closed doors. But to avoid time-consuming deliberations
on what would be said publicly, the two sides decided that each would
issue its own statement.

Sounds like yet another version of 'once we vote on the agreement, you can read the agreement.' But this one has potentially much more deadly consequences....

No sooner were the negotiations over Thursday than Zarif sent a tweet
that dismissed the five-page set of U.S. parameters as “spin.”

On
Iranian state television Saturday, Zarif kept up that refrain, saying
Iran had formally complained to Secretary of State John Kerry that the
measures listed in the U.S. statement were “in contradiction” to what
had been accepted in Lausanne.

Zarif, however, did not challenge any nuclear provisions in the U.S.
document. Instead, he complained that the paper had been drawn up under
Israeli and congressional pressure, and he restated Iran’s insistence on
fast sanctions relief, including the need to “terminate,” not just
suspend, European Union sanctions.

It gets worse....

A review of the dueling U.S. and Iranian statements show they differ
in some important respects. The U.S. statement says Iran has agreed to
shrink its stockpile of uranium to 300 kilograms, a commitment the
Iranian statement does not mention.

The Iranian statement emphasizes that nuclear cooperation between
Iran and the six world powers that negotiated the agreement will grow,
including in the construction of nuclear-power plants, research reactors
and the use of isotopes for medical research. That potential
cooperation is not mentioned in the U.S. statement.

The
U.S. statement says Iran will be barred from using its advanced
centrifuges to produce uranium for at least 10 years. Before those 10
years are up, Iran will be able to conduct some “limited” research on
the centrifuges. The Iranian version omits the word “limited.”

The starkest differences between the U.S. and Iranians accounts
concern the pace at which punishing economic sanctions against Iran are
to be removed. The Iranian text says that when the agreement is
implemented, the sanctions will “immediately” be canceled.

U.S. officials have described sanctions relief as more of a
step-by-step process tied to Iranian efforts to carry out the accord.

With three months of hard bargaining
ahead, some experts worry that the lack of an agreed-upon, detailed
public framework can only complicate the negotiations — and may invite
the Iranians to try to relitigate the terms of the Lausanne deal.

“I think it is a troubling development,” said Ray Takeyh, a senior
fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has been critical of the
Obama administration’s handling of the talks. “They will exploit all
ambiguities with creative interpretations.”

And in any event, even assuming an agreement is reached and Iran actually keeps to it, ten years is not a long time.

The fact that the US has admitted that some of what it is saying is 'spin' (see the tweet above, which comes from a part of the article that I skipped) is probably most worrying of all. No one - other than those who were there - knows exactly what was agreed.

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About Me

I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com